Sword Art Online: The Strongest Warrior
by A New Username
Summary: A month after getting the last of her memories back, Kimiko is relatively back to normal. Things are going about as well as she expected regarding the two girls in love with her - but a phone call from a government official who wants Kimiko to investigate a murder mystery may just be the perfect distraction from her confusing love life. (FemKirito, yuri, pro-VRMMO non-deadly SAO)
1. Prologue

**Author's Note**

 **You guys are gonna be so pissed at me. A month of going on about the fifth fic in the pentalogy, and the first release of it is** _ **this**_ **? Well, in my defense, the original prologue was twice this length and still gaining words. I decided it'd be better to split it up, so here we are with this two-thousand word piece of worthlessness that most of you have probably read before. Chapter one is already complete, though, so you'll see that in a couple days.**

 **The first chapter, which I will release on Saturday, will have original content. After all, Kiriko (female Kirito, see warnings below) obviously has no idea who Kikuoka Seijirou is due to the amnesia preventing him from getting use out of her. So there's already a major divergence from canon.**

 **Anyway, here's the standard warnings:**

 **This is the sequel to an unfinished fanfic (which is also the sequel to another unfinished fanfic), and as such, will contain spoilers for the fics that come before it chronologically. Most of them are very minor, but others can be major. It just depends on what it is. In the case of this story, it plays off of the "true ending" of ALO: Path to Recollection. There are three planned endings to that fic, two of which are pairing routes and one of which is the true end.**

 **Female Kirito. At this point in the series, changing Kiriko back to a male would be even weirder than keeping her as is.**

 **Yuri, as if it weren't obvious by my track record. Seriously, nothing on this account has ever been straight romance.**

 **If you're still reading, good for you! You'll probably enjoy this fic once it gets past the necessary evil of using a novel as a baseline (in other words, from chapter one onward).**

* * *

Sword Art Online: The Strongest Warrior

Prologue: True Power

* * *

"I'm telling you, the theory that «AGI» is the best stat is total nonsense," screeched a high-pitched male voice, echoing off the walls of the spacious tavern. "Sure, Agility is an important stat. Having a high attack speed and dodging ability were enough to make you one of the best… until now."

The owner of the cocky voice was a player in a four-sided holographic panel, floating high in the air in the middle of the dimly-lit establishment. The panel played a popular program called «This Week's Winners» on the net channel MMO Stream. You could watch their video on real TVs or computers, but given that they also streamed into the inns and pubs of countless VRMMO worlds, most players preferred to watch it in-game.

Especially when the segment's guest happened to be from _their_ world.

"But that's all in the past now," he followed up his earlier cocky remark with another. "I've got one simple message for all my buddies who wasted their lives raising AGI for the past eight months: rest in pieces."

His obnoxious taunt got met with boos and jeers from the large pub, and a few glass bottles and beer mugs flew across the room, smashing against the wall into little polygonal shards.

However, one man did not join in the shouting. He waited on the sofa in the back, his body curled up into a ball. His red eyes watched the rest of the tavern with a cold stare from under the low hood of his black cloak and through the eye holes of his skeleton mask.

The gloating man in the program was bad enough, but the slack-faced idiots gazing at the holo-TV were even worse. They all booed and shouted, but it was almost more of a game to them than a serious protest.

He couldn't understand why they acted to empty-headed. The man on the program had seized the mantle of the game's best player through pure luck, and had since become its greatest exploiter as well. He was taking a share of the subscription fee that every player in the game paid, reveling in his pro gamer status.

Everyone must have felt some jealousy and hatred of the gloating champion. If those dark emotions were ugly, then hiding them and pretending to laugh it off was both ugly _and_ farcical.

The man felt his entire body tense beneath the cloak he wore. A breath hissed between his clenched teeth, sounding slightly distorted as it escaped his skeleton mask. It wasn't time yet. He'd draw his weapon a little later.

Back on the holo-panel, the camera zoomed out to show the program's host sitting to the right of the champion, as well as another person on his left. The host, a girl aptly dressed in techno-pop fashion, bubbled out a high-pitched response.

"Those are some pretty powerful words, but I guess I should expect that from the top player of «Sword Art Online», the most hardcore of all the VRMMOs."

"Well, I figured I'd only get one chance to be on MMO Stream, so I had to say my piece while I could," he explained himself while still maintaining his confident look.

"Oh, but you'll be competing in the next «Ballad of Blades», won't you?" the host asked immediately following his elaboration.

"Of course," he replied directly at the camera, brushing back his long, bluish silver hair. "And I'm in it to win it."

The tavern erupted into boos again. MMO stream wasn't produced specifically for Sword Art Online (SAO for short), but the guests and host were all in avatar form. This Week's Winners was an interview program that hosted the best players from various virtual reality massive multiplayer games, and the current guests were the champion and runner up of the Ballad of Blades, the tournament held the month before in SAO.

"The thing is, Zexceed," the runner-up interrupted, clearly tired of hearing the silver-haired man gloat. "The BoB's quarterfinals are all about random solo encounters. There's no guarantee that you'll get the same matchups and results a second time, so it's rather silly to act like this victory was guaranteed by your player build, if you ask me."

"No way. This result was the manifestation of a general trend in SAO. I realize you don't want to admit this, Yamikaze, as you're running an Agility build," the champion retorted. "It's true that until now, pumping up your AGI so you could activate «sword skills» much faster was the prevailing style. The bonus to movement speed also helped with dodging the opponent's attacks as well, which helps make up for the paper-thin defenses. But unlike a single-player game, the balance of an MMO changes over time. When you're dealing with level-based systems, you can't rearrange your stats freely, so you have to allocate those points with an eye toward the future."

As he continued to talk, Yamikaze only grimaced. "The best style in one level zone might not be the best in the next. You understand that, right? The blades we'll see next will have higher and higher Strength requirements to equip, and the same goes for armor with VIT. The idea that you can just dodge your way out of every encounter is going the way of the dodo. The final battle between myself and Yamikaze was a classic example of that process. Most of your sword skill damage was neutralized by my heavy armor, and yet almost every attack I made landed for serious damage. I'll say it right now: we're entering the age of the STR-VIT build.

The man named Yamikaze grimaced with displeasure. "But… that's only because you succeeded in getting a rare sword with a strength requirement just within your grasp, right before the tournament started. How much did you pay for that?"

"Nuh-uh, that was a drop, fair and square. But if you want to put it like that, the greatest stat of all is your real life luck, ha-ha-ha!"

The man on the sofa moved his right hand as he stared at the laughing, silver-haired Zexceed on the holo-panel with complete animosity. He found the grip sticking out of a slot on the belt surrounding his waist and squeezed the strip-leather handle. Very soon. It would happen very soon. He checked the time readout in the corner of his vision. One minute and eighteen seconds left.

At the table nearest to him, two players nursed their mugs and muttered to themselves.

"That bastard. Listen to him prattle on. Who do you think started the whole AGI build movement in the first place? It was Zexceed!" the closer one complained about the irony of the situation.

"Now it looks like it was all a trap to draw the player-base in the wrong direction. And boy did we all fall for it good," the other one assessed grimly.

"You think his new strength and vitality build is a bluff, too?" came the obvious question.

"Makes you wonder what'll come next. Boosting luck?"

"You should try it, man."

"No way in hell."

They both began to cackle. The sound only made the man's anger hotter. How could they laugh like that, knowing they'd been fooled? It made absolutely no sense.

 _But that dumb laughing will cease soon enough. Once they see true power – who the real champion is._

The time had arrived.

He stood without a sound, striding between the tables toward the holo-panel one step at a time. No one paid him any mind, but they'd all be focused on him very soon.

"Fools… you will know true terror as it shakes to your core," he spoke aloud right as he came to a stop just a foot from the holo-panel. He pulled a black, circular weapon from the large slot on his belt – a chakram.

It had a darkness that seemed to cast a shadow on darkness itself, with black skull engravings on the flat of its circular blade. By all standards, it looked like just a regular, albeit scarily-designed, chakram, nothing special.

But this weapon – all of his weapons – had _true power_.

He gripped it tighter, bringing it back over his shoulder. It began to glow bright yellow, signaling the startup of a sword skill's charging animation. The way he had begun to charge it, it would end up flying right at the cockily laughing Zexceed's forehead.

He continued to charge up his skill, while a bit of murmuring broke out around him. Although PKing could be done with little penalty in SAO, the exception was in town, where attacking others was impossible without starting a duel. He could launch his sword skill at the holo-panel, but not only would it not harm Zexceed or any of the players in the bar, it wouldn't even do anything to the environment.

His pointless display caused a few stifled giggles to bubble up around him, but her continued to charge up his skill, undeterred by the ridicule he received. In the holo-panel, Zexceed continued to taunt Yamikaze and the rest of the player base.

Somewhere in the real world, Zexceed's real body was lying down, wearing an «AmuSphere» on his head, while his consciousness was logged into the MMO Stream virtual studio. He would, of course, have no way of knowing that there was a player aiming a sword skill at his image on a holographic screen in a certain pub in the business area of the «Starting City», the capital of floor one of Sword Art Online.

Despite knowing this full well, the man opened his mouth and shouted for everyone in the bar to hear. "Zexceed! False victor! Taste the judgment of true power!"

With the shocked stares of everyone in the room placed on him, he raised his left arm, tracing a cross with his fingertips from forehead to waist, then left shoulder to right. Then, as he lowered his left hand, he released the chakram in his right, and it flew through the silver-haired champion's image in a matter of seconds, creating a brief shimmering effect where it passed through Zexceed's forehead.

That was it. The winner of the Ballad of Blades still continued to chatter as if nothing had happened – and for him, it was true.

Actual laughter broke out at that point. Some of the crowd groaned and muttered to themselves about how embarrassing it was to see a newb do that. Meanwhile, Zexceed continued to speak in a voice that rose above the murmuring.

"Don't you see, even if you include stat distribution and skill selection, the ultimate factor is the player's ski—"

He stopped his taunt midsentence. The pub began to focus on the strange occurrence on the holo-panel.

The champion froze in place, his eyes wide and mouth hanging open. Then slowly, ever so slowly, his hand rose to clutch at his chest. Then, in the next moment, he disappeared, leaving only a 3d-modeled chair in his wake. The host quickly spoke up about this strange happening.

"Uh-oh, looks like he lost connection. Don't change that channel folks, I'm sure he'll be right back with us…"

But no one in the pub heard her. In dead silence, they all stared at the man again – this time, however, in shock instead of amusement.

He caught the chakram as it flew back to him with the completion of his skill, then lowered his hand to his side. He then slowly turned around, his eyes lingering upon the various occupants of the room. Once he had completed a full rotation, he held the chakram high and drew a short sword from the scabbard at his waist, pulling it out from under his cloak and holding it level with his other weapon.

"This is the true power, the true strength! Carve this name and the terror it commands into your hearts, you fools!"

He took a deep breath, then expelled it as he continued. "My name, and the name of my weapons, is… «Death Blade»!"

After returning his weapons to their slots, he swiped open the menu with his left hand. As he hit the logout button, he felt a tremendous sense of triumph, but even that came second to the burning hunger for more.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **Okay, to be fair, this part was kinda necessary to set the scene. By the way, for those of you who remember the true identity of canon Death Gun, and who have read how I introduced that character in Transcendent Bonds… well, you obviously know something's weird here.**

 **Also, did anyone notice that I changed my frequency of using the «» marks? In this story, I'm only going to use them in-game, and only when something is first mentioned. Hopefully that will lessen the constant view of those marks that I noticed in other fics of mine.**

 **So anyway, new chapter in two days! It'll be a thousand words longer than this one without the author notes, so hopefully it'll be a bit more… satisfying.**

 **Anyway, I decided I was tired of waiting on my cover artist to finish the cover for this. I'll just edit it in when it's done, I guess. If you're reading this, ForteDragon, I haven't given up on you, but I can only wait so long before I have to take action myself.**

 **That's enough out of me. I've got a long day visiting with family (by choice for once) ahead of me tomorrow, so I gotta get to bed.**

 **See you Saturday!**


	2. I

**Author's Note**

 **This one is a bit longer, but it likely won't be anywhere near the longest chapter once I'm done with this. I'm expecting a lot of chapters to be near about Transcendent Bonds length, which is around 5-6k words each.**

 **This one also has some original content instead of me working with a novel the whole time. From the start to around the 1800 word mark, so around half the chapter. Which, I suppose, is decent when you consider how I need to set the scene with events that happened in the Phantom Bullet novel. Although, even the novel paraphrasing here has bits of original content interspersed throughout it.**

 **Anyway, still waiting on the cover from ForteDragon, which may be a week, so I'll put one up as a placeholder until then. It'll be worth the wait, though, I promise you that. She's the one who did the covers for GGO: SW, Transcendent Bonds, and Forgive Minus Forget Equals Love. She doesn't believe in her own skills as much as she should, which is really annoying sometimes.**

 **Anyway, that's all for this note.**

* * *

Sword Art Online: The Strongest Warrior

Chapter One: A New, Annoying Face

* * *

I've been having these strange dreams lately. I guess they started after I got my final memory fragment from ALO, the blank one. But the weird thing about all these dreams isn't that they're memories of strange things that happened to me – it's that they're memories that never happened in the first place.

Every dream is a replay of an event from my time in Gun Gale Online. However, in each one, the event goes in a different way from how it really did. For example, in one of the dreams, the first front line leader, Diavel, died in the first checkpoint raid because I didn't act fast enough to save him from the boss's follow up attack. In another dream, I didn't convince Sachi and our legion to not join the tenth checkpoint raid, and they ended up surviving and getting stuck in the first BoB, only for me to have to kill them.

In yet another, my battle with Kayaba Akihiko after the twenty-ninth checkpoint raid played out differently. Instead of winning and prematurely clearing the game, I accidentally relied on my most powerful Blade Master skill, resulting in him blocking every strike and then hitting me with a powerful attack of his own. He defeated me, and the moment after my HP hit zero, my vision went white.

These are but a few of the dreams that I've been having for just over a month. Every time one ends, I wake up in a cold sweat, and I get confused for a minute. I begin to wonder how much of my memories were reality and how many were fantasy – because the dreams just felt so _real_.

I know I should tell someone. I know there's probably a meaning to these dreams, one that I might never figure out on my own. But even so, I just can't bother anyone with it… it's my problem, and I'm not sure if anyone else would understand.

And besides, I can be selfish every once in a while and keep my problems to myself, right?

* * *

It was with great surprise that I found myself awakened from my mid-morning slumber on Saturday. The GGO survivor school didn't have class on Saturday, so I had expected to be able to sleep in for at least two more hours, and had thus stayed up late in ALO the day before.

On the subject of ALO, I still had yet to give an answer to Argo and Sinon about which one I would choose. They had respected my need for time to think on it so far, but I could tell that after a month of stalling them, their collective patience was running thin. In a few days, they'd likely confront me about the issue again, and I'd be forced to tell them I hadn't made a decision.

Back to waking up unexpectedly Saturday morning. Why did I find myself startled awake, you ask? A familiar ringing noise blared from right next to my ear, jolting me into consciousness at light speed. I quickly sat up, looking around like someone shot me, and then my gaze made its way to the spot beside my pillow.

My cell phone was ringing, but not because of an alarm I had neglected to turn off – someone was calling me. The ringtone told me I hadn't registered them as a contact (hell, only Argo, Sinon and my therapist were registered in my phone anyway), but when I looked at the caller ID on the touch screen, it showed the phrase, 'caller ID blocked' in big font.

Immediately, my brain flooded with questions. Why would the caller ID be blocked? Was the government calling me? And for that matter, assuming that was the case, why would the government want to call me anyway?

I picked up the phone and tapped the green 'answer' button hesitantly, and brought my phone to my ear. "Hello? Who is this?" I asked, voice as firm as I could make it in this unfamiliar situation.

"This is Kikuoka Seijirou," a light, almost carefree-sounding masculine voice resounded from the other line. "Am I talking to Kiriko?"

For a moment, I stayed silent. Why did this person know my in-game name? How had he cracked me in the real? Could I really trust him?

"… What do you want so bad that you'd crack me in the real?" I asked him with a firmness that came from more than just a little anger.

"There's no need for such accusations," he replied in a frustratingly casual tone. Something about this man bugged me to no end, and I'd never even met him before. "I've known you since your mind was last at infancy. In fact, I'm the one who let you keep your Nerve Gear."

So he'd known me since right after I woke up from Sugou's prison – wait, did he say he was the one who let me keep my Nerve Gear? Just who was this person, and what did he want with me after all this time?

"Actually, there's something I want to discuss with you," he elaborated before I got the chance to ask him to. "Your little friend Sinon-chan told me you have your memories back, and since you're the only player in GGO famous for using a sword, I thought you'd be the perfect fit."

The more he talked, the more questions he generated about himself, his motives, and just what the hell he wanted from me. But I knew that such a talk would probably be best saved for an in-person meeting, not a phone conversation that could be recorded.

"… Fine," I told him after a few moments' deliberation. I spoke into the mic of my phone with a calm, measured, but also harsh tone. "Tell me the date, time, and place, and we can meet up. But not just for what you want; I want some answers as well."

"Today, in an hour and a half, at that high-end dessert restaurant a few blocks from your house. I'll buy you anything you want from the menu, so don't worry about money!"

"Nobody taught you patience, huh?" I asked him with thinly-veiled resentment. There went any chance of sleeping in for even a half hour more…

"What was that? I was just about to hang up," he said in that annoyingly relaxed tone.

"Nothing, so was I," I lied. At this point, I didn't know whether or not this person had any power over me, so pissing him off might not work out well.

"Okay, bye!"

"Whatever." That didn't mean I couldn't be at least a little sassy, though.

With a soft _click_ , the line disconnected, and I drew the phone from my ear. Almost immediately after, I unlocked it, then went into the app for calling people. I tabbed over to the contacts page, and selected, 'Pushy Blue Hair' from the list. It pulled up an info page, and I immediately hit the button in the top right corner, 'call'.

Once again, I put the phone to my ear. It rang once, twice, three times before I heard a _click_ sound, followed by some shuffling noises. After about ten seconds, a groggy-sounding, "Hello…?" came from the other line.

"Don't pretend to be tired, Sinon," I immediately cut through her BS with my words. "Who the heck did you just sick on me?"

"Okay, fine then," she replied with a hundred percent less grogginess. "Be that way, even though I gave you an excuse to put off giving me and Argo an answer, because it's so obvious you haven't come up with one yet."

"Wait, what?" Well, if this whole situation was interesting in an annoying way before, now it was interesting in a possibly pleasing way.

"Well, your mood just lifted five levels," she assessed from the other line, ire dripping from every word. "That guy that just called you from a blocked number? About ten minutes ago, he called _me_ and woke me up, like he probably did to you. He asked me to investigate something in a VRMMO, but when he told me that the main weapons in the game were swords, I told him you were better for the job, since you were the only GGO survivor who got famous for a style of sword-fighting."

What she said probably would have confused me if not for something I only recently learned. Apparently, shortly after I woke up, ALfheim Online got bought out by another company, because its current owner went insane and could no longer manage it. One of the first things the new owner did was create a bare-basics version of the engine used to create ALO (which was based off of GGO), and then give out a thousand copies for free in a raffle before selling the engine a few months later. The result, as one might guess, is that thousands of VRMMOs sprung up rather quickly. By the time I started ALO with no memories of my old self, it was far from alone in the VRMMO industry.

"So that's why he called me out of the blue and asked to meet up," I concluded, my expression neutral as I got up out of bed. I still had to feed Shadow and get ready for the meeting, after all. "But why did you know him well enough for him to ask you to investigate in the first place?"

A thick silence went through the line for several seconds, and I began to wonder just what could get her to be so hesitant before she broke it with, "Back when most of the players logged out because you cleared the game, I traded information on GGO for your hospital number. We kept in touch after that, mostly because every time I needed a favor, I could tell him some more info on GGO and he could basically do or get anything."

Now it made a bit more sense. Why Sinon had taken my amnesia so well after we met up – it wasn't because she was a relaxed person (no way in hell), but because she already suspected or knew about it. She must have been one of the people in my room when I first woke up, having the mind of a newborn. I've figured out through medical records that the diagnosis of an abnormal case of amnesia didn't come for a few days after I awakened, so she may have left before then, since she didn't seem to know about it when she confronted me on the first day of school—

"You're making one of your miracle conclusions again, aren't you?" she interrupted me from my thoughts with a slightly amused tone. "You're so smart you could pass for a genius sometimes, yet you're so dense when it comes to romance… just what went wrong?"

"Don't think that last part will go unpunished, Sinon! Retribution is coming!"

* * *

"Welcome," a man in a tuxedo told me as I entered the restaurant, bowing graciously. "Party of one?"

"Actually, I'm meeting someone here," I replied nonchalantly. There weren't too many people here, so my anxiety actually rated pretty low at the time.

Then, a loud, carefree voice broke the calm atmosphere, coming from a table near a window in the back. "Kiriko-chan, over here!"

The hushed, refined chatter that had flowed over the classical background music fell silent, replaced by disapproving stares. I hunched my shoulders and quickly made my way over to the source of the shout. With my dark denim jacket, black shirt, and loose-fitting jeans, I stood in stark contrast to all the middle-aged, manicured, femininely-dressed women of wealth who seemed to fill the room. Their irritation at the well-dressed yet ill-behaved man who brought me here seemed to grow with every passing moment.

It might not have been so bad if two things were different: me actually dressing like a girl, and this man who invited me not being at least a good ten to fifteen years older than me. But I never felt comfortable in women's clothing, let alone women's fancy dress, and the government official who he seemed to be had to be at least twenty-seven, if not closer to thirty years old. He still had the spunk of someone young, but the beginnings of wrinkles were starting to appear in very small areas on his face.

I sat down in my seat across from him, not bothering to hide how out of place I felt. The waiter from before swooped in the moment I sat down, offering me a glass of water and a fresh hand towel, as well as a menu. I grabbed the latter item, noting the brown leather finish, and the fellow across from me piped up.

"This is on me, so don't worry about price and just order whatever you want," he told me, making it sound like he had more money than he knew what to do with.

I quickly discovered that I couldn't read whatever was written on the menu. It looked like… French? Just a guess, but either way, I had no idea what any of the items were. In the end, I just ended up ordering things based off the few pictures on the menu, and whatever items seemed to be connected to the pictures. The total came to around 5500 yen for all of my items, which were a slice of exotic-looking cake, an expensive ice cream sundae, and a fancy coffee. A lot of sweet stuff, but what could I do? This was a dessert restaurant, there was nothing even remotely spicy-looking on the menu.

"They'll be right up," the waiter said calmly, departing in a smooth manner to relay my order.

The man across the table from me, who had already received his order of a gigantic serving of pudding with cream piled high, must have been Kikuoka Seijirou. His voice sounded similar to the voice on the phone, and his mannerisms seemed to fit the demeanor I got from him during the call as well. That, and he still instilled me with the same sense of both annoyance and unease at the same time.

He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses, had an utterly plain, short, dark brown haircut, and narrow, fussy features that brought a schoolteacher of language to mind – but despite this, I knew from Sinon that he was a government official, one who worked in a division newly-developed, whose big name would translate to the "virtual division".

In other words, this man was a government agent – or possibly a scapegoat – in charge of monitoring the chaotic and lawless world of virtual reality. Seemed like quite the unstable position, as far as I could tell.

The scapegoat of a government official carried another bite of pudding into his mouth, swallowed, and looked at me with a mischievous grin. "Hey there, Kiriko-chan. Sorry for waking you up so early on a Saturday."

"If you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it in the first place," I snapped back before I could think it through. I wiped my hands on the citrus-scented hand towel, then added, "And don't call me Kiriko. I have a different name in real life."

"Ah, yes," he spoke as if my harshness didn't affect him at all. "Your real name, Kirigaya Kimiko. A genius who pretended to be average, yet was so good with computers that she earned the recognition of Kayaba Akihiko himself. You know, you were the only person in the world to get a personal invite to GGO's beta from its head creator."

I ignored the implications of his words – that he had dug up serious data on me behind my back, that is – and chose to focus on responding to them at face value. "And look at what it got me. I got stuck in a death game, won my way out at the cost of most of my friends, then got stuck in another virtual world where I ended up losing all my memories. Yeah, being a genius worthy of recognition by a mad quantum physicist with a god complex has improved my life a lot. Totally."

I gave a mighty sigh, deciding I'd had enough small talk. "Anyway, can we get to the point of this meeting? I heard from Sinon that you want me to investigate something in a VRMMO that mainly uses swords. Let me guess: someone committed a crime, and you want me to find out more about it by doing hands-on research?"

"Well, you're quick on the uptake, aren't you? Guess I should have expected that from a genius like you."

My eyes twitched in indignation at the word 'genius' being used to describe me once again. I spent a good portion of my life trying to hide my intelligence from everyone, so hearing it so freely mentioned made me uneasy, if not a bit irritated.

The waiter appeared without a sound and placed a plate of cake, bowl of ice cream, and cup of coffee in front of me. "Will that be all today?" he asked me politely. I nodded, and he placed a receipt on the table and left soundlessly.

I started on the ice cream first, lifting a spoonful to my mouth and letting it sit on my tongue for a moment. When it began to melt, I swallowed it and spoke.

"Well then, I hope you're aware that I'm going to need more compensation than a few items off a dessert menu," I told him in the most no-refusal tone I could muster. "There's something I want you to look into for me regarding a possible ALO player who also played GGO."

"You drive a hard bargain," he told me with a smile that hid his true feelings quite well. "How about I tell you the job first, and then you tell me what you want as payment. I'm sure I can look into this player if that's what you want. Now, look at this."

I nodded, and the government official grabbed something from the seat next to him and put it on the table. The item, an old-fashioned touch screen tablet, showed a picture of some random guy, along with a profile containing an address, among other personal info. The picture showed a man with long, unkempt hair, silver-rimmed glasses, and heavy fat around his cheeks and neck.

"Who's this guy?" I asked with no hesitation.

Kikuoka merely smiled at my blunt question, before his face suddenly turned dead serious, a first for my time knowing him. "Let's see… it was last month, in May. You were still getting your memories from ALO back then, if I remember right."

My eyes twitched again as I wondered just how much of my life this person knew about, but I kept silent in hopes he'd get to the point. "Anyway, at an apartment complex in the Nakano Ward, the landlord was doing some cleaning and noticed a funny smell. He narrowed it down to one unit, but there was no response to the intercom or the phone. Yet the lights were on in the apartment. So he undid the electronic lock and entered the apartment to find… Tamotsu Shigemura, age twenty-six, dead."

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **There were originally about two hundred more words to this. Hell, originally, this was a part of the prologue. I split that prologue into three for the sake of, quite frankly, getting more attention.?**

 **That being said, the third part of the prologue, which is now chapter two, isn't actually done yet. It's at 250 words and gaining, and I'll probably be done in a couple days, but I recently figured out a way to continue ALfheim Online: Path to Recollection that also ties in with a reference in chapter two of this fic. So I'll work on that before getting back to this, so as to avoid spoiling a part that hasn't even been released yet.**

 **Also, in case it didn't become obvious by the pairing tags, this pentalogy isn't a love triangle (well, the first and third fics are, but still). Frankly, it was and is my attempt at creating a believable yuri harem centered around a female Kiriko. I know it's dumb, but it's been a blast to write, so I'm sticking with it to the end, even if that end is a fiery wreck of angry reviewers.**

 **Anyway, I don't have much else to say. I guess I'll see you next chapter, if not before then with ALO: PtR.**


	3. II

**Author's Note**

 **This chapter is almost as long as the story was before this got added. I'm kind of surprised but kind of not. Most of this chapter was still the necessary evil of novel paraphrasing, but I did make a lot of changes, so it'd be in your best interests to still read it anyway. Making Kikuoka a kiss-ass was kind of fun, for one.**

 **Anyway, I know I said I'd wait until I got to a certain point in ALO: PtR to publish this, but then the cover got finished, so I started working on it again. And then I realized that the spoilers wouldn't just be for ALO: PtR, but also for the only unpublished fic in the series. And since I haven't started on that and don't plan to for a while, I figured all was fair and that I should publish this anyway. Otherwise it's like I'm showing a preference for ALO: PtR over the unpublished one.**

 **That said, this chapter contains spoilers for ALO: PtR and the unpublished transition between Transcendent Bonds and ALO: PtR, as well as some minor spoilers for TB itself. So if you have an aversion to being spoiled, you may want to stop reading here. If you don't mind spoilers/the curiosity for this fic outweighs the annoyance at being spoiled, then continue reading.**

 **See you at the bottom!**

* * *

Sword Art Online: The Strongest Warrior

Chapter Two: Persuasion Tactics

* * *

" _Who's this guy?" I asked with no hesitation._

 _Kikuoka merely smiled at my blunt question, before his face suddenly turned dead serious, a first for my time knowing him. "Let's see… it was last month, in May. You were still getting your memories from ALO back then, if I remember right."_

 _My eyes twitched again as I wondered just how much of my life this person knew about, but I kept silent in hopes he'd get to the point. "Anyway, at an apartment complex in the Nakano Ward, the landlord was doing some cleaning and noticed a funny smell. He narrowed it down to one unit, but there was no response to the intercom or the phone. Yet the lights were on in the apartment. So he undid the electronic lock and entered the apartment to find… Tamotsu Shigemura, age twenty-six, dead."_

* * *

My eyes widened a fraction at this, but he still hadn't explained enough for me to understand how this was relevant to the case he needed me for. I gulped and nodded my head slightly, and he took it as the cue to continue talking.

"They determined he was dead for five and a half days. The room was cluttered, but not ransacked, and the body was lying on the bed. Around his head was…"

"An AmuSphere," I finished, knowing full-well he wanted me to connect the dots. I myself still used my Nerve Gear, but I knew what an AmuSphere looked like from my visit to Alice's house.

My mind began to wander at that point. First I was thinking about the AmuSphere I saw at Alice's house, and the next thing I knew, my mind drifted to what happened between me and her that night… my first real-life kiss. And then, the things I said after she told me I should leave… they were some of the boldest words I ever uttered.

"That's right," he interrupted my thoughts at what seemed like a perfectly timed moment. "They contacted the family at once and had an autopsy performed. The cause of death was sudden cardiac arrest."

"Cardiac arrest, huh?" I parroted his last words as I mulled them over in my head. "And do you know why his heart stopped, by chance?"

"We have no idea, actually."

I looked at him skeptically, not saying a word in response. He still hadn't explained how this pertained to me and my oncoming investigation in the slightest, so I saw no need to be frantic just yet.

"Too much time passed after his death, and the likelihood of criminal involvement was low, so they didn't bother with a detailed autopsy," he elaborated on his previous statement a bit. "The one thing we know is that he hadn't eaten anything in about two days, and was still logged in when it happened."

I knit my eyebrows together in slight confusion. This kind of story wasn't even all that rare, so why would he bring it up to me? Eating in the virtual world caused a false sense of fullness that lasted several hours, even if the user hadn't eaten anything in the real world. The ultra-hardcore gamers found that doing this cut down on food costs and gave them more time to play, so it wasn't rare to hear about players who only ate one meal every two days. I myself usually skipped out on dinner every day due to this same factor.

Naturally, if the one meal every two days pattern continued, there would be harmful effects on the body. Malnutrition was the obvious outcome, and if you had a seizure while living alone, unable to care for yourself… the natural outcome was much like this case. It happened from time to time.

I closed my eyes in a sort of silent mourning of this Shigemura, then opened my mouth a second later. "This is a sad story, but you know…"

"I know what you're saying. It's sad, but all too common nowadays," he spoke what I had implied without any hesitation. I sadly seemed to have lost that kind of bluntness with my memories, and even after getting them back, the unforgiving honesty I used to have never did make its return. I stopped mourning my old personality's death once he started talking again.

"This kind of death isn't news anymore, and you can't get an accurate tally because families don't want people to know about them dying while playing a game," he continued speaking the merciless truth without even blinking. "In a way, this is a case of VRMMOs contributing to the death numbers…"

"But you didn't bring me here to talk about normal cases," I countered his logic with my own. "Be straight with me; give me the lowdown. What happened behind the scenes that makes this case special enough to bring up?"

"There was only one game installed on Shigemura's AmuSphere," he started by backtracking as far as he possibly could. "Sword Art Online. Have you heard of it?"

"I've heard of it, but I haven't tried playing it yet," I acknowledged, sighing into the palm of my right hand. "It's that one VRMMO based on Kayaba Akihiko's hit 2D MMO of the same name. It's also the only VRMMO in the business that lets you go pro, right?"

"The very same," he said with an unreadable tone and an emotionless visage. "Shigemura was apparently the very top player in Sword Art Online, or SAO for short. He won a tournament held to determine the very best back in April. His player name: Zexceed."

"So, was he logged into SAO when he died?" I tried to get to the heart of the situation. Kikuoka shook his head, and I knew I had failed.

"Actually, not this time. He was in character as Zexceed while appearing on the MMO Stream online channel."

"Oh… on _This Week's Winners_ , then," I connected the dots in my head, recalling a particular incident that happened recently. "Now that you mention it, I remember one of the last times I watched it, they had to cancel because the guest dropped out partway through."

"That would have been it, then," the man across from me acknowledged before continuing the story. "He had a heart attack in the middle of the program. We know the time down to the second, thanks to the recorded log. However, as far as stuff we haven't confirmed yet, there's a very strange blog post someone put up about an event in SAO that happened at the same time."

"How is it strange?" Now we were getting somewhere.

"You know how MMO Stream plays even within the world of SAO?" he asked me as if I somehow knew anything beyond the surface of this game I've never played before.

"Well, I wouldn't be surprised," I admitted as much as I could for someone who knew nothing about the game in question. "At least, when the stream is about their world, it would make sense."

"Well, it was being streamed in a bar in the Town of Beginnings, the main settlement of floor one of SAO," he told me, confirming my suspicions before causing new ones. "And right at the time in question, they reported a player acting very strangely."

I stayed silent, waiting for him to explain the situation in full before making any rash judgments. After all, I knew that this was probably the most important part of the case – the reason it was unusual in the first place instead of just a standard malnutrition death. After a few seconds of waiting, Kikuoka continued his story.

"Seems this player fired a chakram skill at the image of Zexceed on the TV, shouting about judgment and that he should die and the like," he told me, stopping for a second to gauge my reaction. When I didn't give him anything to go on, he continued speaking. "One of the other players at the scene just happened to be in the process of a sound recording, and he uploaded it to a video site. The file had a Japan Standard Time readout on it, and according to that, the skill released at the TV at precisely… eleven thirty pm and two seconds, May ninth. In the description, he said it hit the holographic screen a second later. And Shigemura suddenly disappeared from the program at eleven thirty and fifteen seconds."

"That may seem convincing, but the two can't really be related," I told him my thoughts, pulling the cup of coffee closer. "It must be a coincidence."

I took a sip of the coffee, noting with interest that it was sweet at first, but after swallowing, the aftertaste was quite bitter. It seemed to have a flavoring similar to semi-sweetened chocolate, more on the bitter side than the sweet. I normally wouldn't mind such a flavor, but the bitter aftertaste seemed to amplify the unpleasant nature of Kikuoka's story, which was already bad enough by itself.

After I put the cup down, I continued. "The jealousy and hate the best player in SAO gets has to be at least several times worse than in any other MMO, virtual or otherwise. It would take some guts to attack him directly, but it seems almost normal to attack a TV featuring him. No negative repercussions whatsoever, he'll never even know you did it."

"I thought the same thing before I did a little digging," he told me, before his face turned scarily grim. "And I found another one."

I narrowed my eyes, trying to ascertain the truth to this statement. He didn't seem to be lying, but… "Come again? You mean another case like this one?"

"Exactly. This one happened a little less than ten days ago," he told me, and I instantly realized that this whole problem had only recently been brought to his attention. "On June eighteenth. Another body found in a two-floor apartment building, this time in Omiya Ward in Saitama. A door-to-door salesman got angry that there was no response despite the lights being on, and thought the resident was ignoring him, so he turned the knob and found that it was unlocked. Inside he saw another person on their bed, AmuSphere in place, with a decomposing smell—"

A very intentional and forced cough interrupted our conversation, and Kikuoka and I turned over to see two of the same ladies staring at us disapprovingly when I arrived, giving us glares almost more disturbing than my table-mate's story. The person across from me must have had nerves of steel (setting aside the fact that his job probably required it), though, and merely gave them a slight bow before continuing his story a little more carefully.

"Putting aside the state of the body, it was once again determined to be heart failure," he told me, clearly avoiding describing it for the sake of the other occupants of the restaurant. "This one was… well, the name doesn't matter. Male, age 30. Another influential player in SAO. His character name was something ridiculous. I think it was 'Lightly Salted Cod Roe' or something."

"There was a guy in GGO named 'North Sea Salmon Roe', so maybe they were related," I recalled the rather odd name that showed up on the frontlines shortly after the first BoB. "Since I don't remember any streams going on that week until after that date, I'm guessing this one was in-game rather than on TV?"

"Brilliant deduction. I just love how quickly you make connections!" he raised his voice in excitement as he praised me, but after what I assumed were harsh glares from the two women behind me, he cleared his throat and began talking again. "Based on the AmuSphere's log, the signal died out about three days before the body was found, at exactly ten o'clock and four seconds PM, June fifteenth. That about lines up with the estimated time of death. At the time, he was meeting with his guild in the central square of the Town of Beginnings. As he was delivering a fiery speech on the pulpit, a player invaded the meeting and hit him with a Chakram skill. You don't take damage in town, from what I understand, but when he turned to yell at the intruder, he just suddenly dropped offline. Of course, this info comes from a message board, so it's hard to get an exact picture…"

"Did the player who attacked him say anything in particular?" I asked after he trailed off. He responded with about what I expected.

"He said something about judgment and power and dropped the same name mentioned by the guy who attacked Zexceed's image on the TV."

"The first two and the same weapon choice were enough to be suspicious, but that last part makes it obvious," I explained a bit of my thought process to him. "It's gotta be the same guy. What's the name he said?"

Kikuoka looked at his tablet through his glasses with a mild squint. "Looks like it's Death Blade."

"Death Blade… huh?"

I looked into my coffee mug, the rest of my dishes ignored, and let the name roll around in my head for a while. No matter how dumb it may have been, a character's name was a huge part of the first impression one gave to others. The name Death Blade suggested the cold, unforgiving glint of a black metal sword to me.

 _Or maybe a dagger— no, this isn't the time._

I shook my head, trying to force out the sudden rush of memories. Of the young, smart yet naïve boy who used a handgun and black dagger, who was drawn into darkness and a path of murder by the pretty words of PoH. That kid… even if he did survive GGO, there was no way he would have started playing another VRMMO after all the trauma he went through…

"You said it was cardiac arrest that killed them both, right? I'll trust those words at face value for now," I told him after I finished shaking my head. "And I'm sure if they picked up any problems in the brain, you'd have said that, not that anything can damage it from the AmuSphere. Maybe if it were Nerve Gear, but the newer hardware is weaker."

"You ruled out the possibility already? I'm impressed by your knowledge. You've done your homework as well, I see," he praised me once again, and my eye twitched at how much of a kiss-ass he was being with me. "You're right on all accounts. There was nothing wrong with their brains other than being dead. The only thing that happened to their bodies was heart failure."

"There's something else I found out through 'doing my homework'," I pressed on, using his own words to further my point. "The AmuSphere addressed the fatal workings of the Nerve Gear, but they didn't address another capability the original hardware had. I may be the only one who knows about it because I'm the only one who confronted Sugou before he 'went insane', but the Nerve Gear and the AmuSphere can both alter the memories of the user."

"Oh? This is the first I've heard of this. I might have to get in touch with the manufacturers of the AmuSphere again. Can you explain a bit more?"

"That's the reason both of us logged out that day with an unusual case of complete and total amnesia, though his was branded as insanity due to things going on in his personal life at the time," I elaborated on the situation a little. "Because he set it up so that when I logged out, all my memories would scatter away from me. So before I killed him in the game, which forced him to log out, I did the same thing to him with my admin rights."

"What game is this, again?" he asked me, and I remembered that I still hadn't told anyone about this particular experience.

"It wasn't really a game," I explained, sighing slightly. "It was Sugou's experiment space, though I think it was also a sub-server of ALfheim Online. It was where he kept three-thousand players of GGO prisoner for an extra month, performing memory altering experiments on them."

I felt myself getting a little unstable at the sudden recollection, so I decided to change the topic. "Anyway, that's enough about that. Back to the original topic. Their brains weren't damaged, and I know from reading about the limitations of the AmuSphere that no kind of sensory input signal is allowed to be strong enough to actually have harmful effects on the body. In other words, there's no way that the attacks could actually be connected… unless…"

A crazy yet still plausible idea entered my head at the last minute. While there was no way that the attack in-game could be the cause of death, I had noticed that both instances where this happened were seconds away from a major time in the hour. The first one was at eleven thirty plus a few seconds, and the second was at ten o-clock and a few seconds. Those were very specific times… almost as if the attacker had obsessed over the timing. But why would that even matter?

"Unless what? What are you thinking?"

"I've got a wild idea, but I'm not entirely sure if it's of any worth," I told him my musings, my stare hardening a bit. "Both instances were at very specific times. He seemed to be obsessing over the timing. It doesn't make sense at first, but when you think about how he actually has no way of really causing death through an attack, it starts to be a little more clear. The only reason he'd obsess over timing so much is if he were waiting for something – no, some _one_ else to do something before he made his move."

"So you're saying there could be another guy involved?" Kikuoka assessed, giving me a curious frown. "And that this other person is the one actually causing the death?"

"Yeah," I answered with a single word and a nod of my head. "Then the obsession with timing makes perfect sense. It would also explain why they died right after a single pointless attack, one that wouldn't have even dented their HP because of the locations."

"I see what you mean," he acknowledged, face turning a bit grim. "But then how did this duo obtain the addresses of these people? It's not like they would just automatically know where to go."

"There must be some in-game event where the players have to enter their address," I addressed his concern with a possible answer. "What about the tournament you talked about before? The one to decide the strongest player? Do the players have to enter their addresses for that?"

"I don't know for sure," the man across from me said while putting a hand to his temple. "But I do know that the winner of the tournament actually gets a very large cash prize and a share of everyone else's subscription fee until the next tournament is over. If the money is sent via house mail, then it is plausible that they would make all participants enter their addresses."

It was at that point that I suddenly remembered what he supposedly wanted from me. He wanted me to do 'hands on research'. After what we had been discussing, this only brought one conclusion into plainly obvious view.

"Sorry for the change of subject," I prefaced my coming words with this as a means of explanation. "But am I right in assuming that you want me to actually play SAO and get him to come after me?"

"Well, when you put it like that, I sound heartless."

"If all you want is to get him to attack someone, why don't _you_ go get hit by his chakram?" I couldn't help but ask.

He frowned even more than before, shaking his head. "I'd solve this myself if I could, but you've already ruled out and come up with more possibilities in thirty minutes than anyone officially on this case has in over a week. And not to mention, it seems that this Death Blade person has an extremely rigid process of choosing his targets."

"And that process is?" I queried with an icy tone and even more glacial stare.

"Death Blade's two targets in the game, Zexceed and fish guy, were both well-known for their skills," he told me, holding his hands up in a defense mechanism. "So it looks like he won't attack you unless you're one of the best. I could spend years and never get to that point. However, in Gun Gale Online, you were not only the best from what Sinon-chan says, but you were also famous for being able to use a sword effectively in a world of gun-based combat."

"SAO has got to be harder than GGO," I countered his statement about my skills with a comparison. "I mean, there are tone of pros playing it."

"You mentioned 'going pro' earlier, too. What exactly does that mean?"

"It means what it says," I started. I knew that by explaining this, I was beginning to fall into his trap, but my desire to clarify things was stronger than my desire to bail. "People can earn a living playing the game. Of all the VRMMOs out there, Sword Art Online is the only one with a coin conversion system."

"Oh?"

Even government agent Kikuoka was not completely knowledgeable about all the gaming lingo out there, it seemed. I could tell he was legitimately confused this time, rather than pretending to be to get me to reveal more.

"Basically, the cash in the game can be withdrawn as real money," I continued to elaborate. "It's an electronic currency, not actual yen, but it might as well be, all things considered."

"How do they make a profit like that?"

"Because not everyone is making money off it. It's kind of like slots or betting with poker," I told him, watching as his eyes gained a small light of understanding. "The monthly fee is three-thousand yen, which is high for a VRMMO. The amount the average player will earn is maybe ten percent of that, so a few hundred yen. But there's a high similarity to gambling in the game's system – every once in a while, someone gets a rare drop that's worth a ton of money. They sell that in the auction house and convert the earnings to electronic money, and it can fetch them tens to even hundreds of thousands of yen. Anyone who hears that is gonna think 'that could be me.' See what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, that makes sense…"

"The pros in SAO are the ones who earn a constant amount every month," I went back to my earlier point. "The best players earn around two to three hundred thousand a month, which isn't much in real life – but it's still enough for a frugal lifestyle. So basically, these few top players are able to earn a complete living from the membership fees of the rest of the player base. That's what I meant when I said the best players get more jealousy and hate than in other games. They're like government employees scarfing down expensive desserts on the taxpayers' hard-earned money."

"Wow, you really have a way with words, don't you? But I find such unforgivingly blunt honesty fascinating. It makes you an interesting person."

I ignored him and started to tie in my previous explanations with my reason for saying them. "Because of that, the high-level players in SAO put way more time and enthusiasm into the game than those in other MMOs. If I waltz in there without any knowledge of the game, I'm not going to get anywhere. Besides, my character in GGO was a hybrid between handgun and sword – I used both, not just one. You'll need to—"

"Before you refuse, answer one question for me," he requested, his face getting a little desperate. I nodded, and he continued. "Sinon told me you were fast enough with a sword to block bullets with a ninety-five percent success rate. Do you honestly think that anyone in this game centered around swords could attack you faster than those bullets moved in GGO?"

 _Well, shit. He has a good point. Even if the Sword Skills from the 2D version are in the game, they'd be in slow motion compared to what I've blocked before._

"If you still think it'd be too much to take on the pros, then I can turn it into a job for you as well," he chimed in, stopping my thoughts cold. When I looked up to him with a blank expression, he smirked. "I can pay you a stipend for research assistance monthly for as long as you're on the case. Let's say… the same amount one of those SAO pros makes in a month. This much."

He held up three fingers, and I could feel my salivary glands start working overtime at the implied hundred thousand behind them. The first check would be enough to restart my business of making custom computers and selling them, with change to spare. But as tantalizing as the offer was, it also raised more questions.

"Something's not right here, Kikuoka," I decided I had to get an explanation before making a decision. "Why are you to fixated on this case? The chance that it's just an urban legend made to explain two people going offline permanently is over ninety percent. And on the off chance that this is legit criminal activity, you're so desperate to catch him that you're sending a high schooler who just recovered from total amnesia to try to do it for you."

Kikuoka straightened his glasses with pale, slender fingers, hiding his expression from direct view. It was clear he was considering how much of the truth to reveal, and how much to keep hidden. He was even more shrewd than I initially thought.

"Well, I wouldn't send a high schooler unless they were the best for the job, just for the record," he finally said after several seconds of silence. "But you're right, I am unusually fixated on what could just be rumors. The truth is that the bosses are worried about it. The real-world influences of full-dive technology are under more scrutiny from a variety of fields than anything else. The social and cultural impact is undeniable, but the biological impact is a subject of hot debate. They want to know how the human condition is changed by the virtual world."

He sighed before continuing to talk, this time a bit less emotionlessly. "If it's determined that there is proper danger, it's possible that a move to regulate will be in the works again. Actually, there was almost proposed legislation on the incident right after the GGO incident. But the entire virtual division, including myself, feel that it would be wrong to hold back the tide now – for the sake of your generation, the ones enjoying these VRMMOs. I want to find out the truth behind this odd series of events before it gets used for political purposes by those who want to crack down on the technology. If it turns out to be just an urban legend, then that's the best outcome, but I don't know for sure. I want you to help me figure it out beyond a shadow of a doubt. That sound okay?"

"I suppose I'd be a bit more willing if you explained why you haven't just gone through the company that created SAO's VR version," I said after a moment's hesitation. "Because I'm assuming that something is preventing you from doing that to find out this attacker's identity, based on how you've resorted to this kind of method instead."

"Another brilliant deduction," he praised me again before his smile turned bitter. "The developer of SAO is a company called Zaskar – actually, I don't even know if they're a real company. Either way, the servers are based in America. They've got excellent customer support in-game, but their actual office location, phone number and email address are all private. I swear, ever since the creators of ALO had that giveaway of The Seed, these VR worlds pop up like bamboo shoots."

"Is that so?"

I looked disappointed outwardly, but I actually knew a lot more than I let on. In my last moments in Sugou's experiment space, I had actually put The Seed, which Kayaba had given to me minutes prior, in a location where the company managing ALfheim could easily find it. When ALO got bought out after Sugou woke up, the new company must have found it, because the engine they gave away a thousand copies of and started to sell had the same name and was the same exact thing, as far as I could tell.

"So basically, if we want to get down to the truth of the matter, we have to make contact in-game," he said exactly what I had been expecting to hear. "Of course, we'll take every precaution we can in the name of safety. You'll dive from a room we've prepared for you, with a full-time monitor that will automatically disconnect the AmuSphere if its output does anything funny. I'm not asking you to get him to attack you; I just want you to react based on what you see and how you feel. So… are you in?"

I realized at that moment that I had no way of denying him anymore. The noose had found its way completely around my neck.

Even though I knew I'd regret my next decision, I also couldn't deny that my interest had been piqued. The power to affect the real world from the virtual world… if such a thing existed, could that have been the thing that Kayaba Akihiko sought when he created GGO? Was the incident that began on a cold winter day two and a half years before still happening even now?

If that was truly the case, then maybe it was my responsibility at GGO's clearer to see this unfold.

I shut my eyes, gave a great sigh, and spoke. "All right. I don't like being forced into it, but I'll do it. And just to let you know, I'll be using my Nerve Gear. But I can't promise I'll be able to find this Death Blade guy. We don't even know if he really exists."

"Ah, all right, Nerve Gear it is. And about whether he exists," Kikuoka started with an innocent smile that did nothing to betray his true intention. "Didn't I tell you already? One of the players present at the first attack got an audio log of the room. He brought a compressed version of it to us. It's Death Blade's voice. Have a listen."

He extended a wireless earbud to me, and I immediately inspected it for earwax, thankfully finding none. _I hope your heart stops next,_ I thought as my suspicious gaze turned to him.

However, instead of voicing my thoughts, I said, "How considerate of you. Thanks, I guess."

I stuck the bud in my left ear and watched Kikuoka tap at the screen. A low buzz of excitement sounded from the earpiece. Suddenly, the murmuring stopped, and a piercing statement cut through the tense silence.

"This is the true power, the true strength! Carve this name and the terror it commands into your hearts, you fools! My name, and the name of my weapons, is… _Death_ _Blade_!"

The voice was strangely metallic and inhuman, as if it went through a distortion. And yet I vividly felt the flesh-and-blood human presence within that shout. Rather than the voice of someone role-playing, this voice channeled a true impulse to slaughter, more intense than I'd felt in years.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **So yeah, this almost doubles the story length. How about that? This is the kind of length I was expecting for this story's chapters, to be honest. Expect them to be as long as this most of the time, rather than the piddly-assed starting chapter lengths.**

 **Anyway, what do you think of the changes that have been made? Canon Kirito is supposedly very smart, but you never really see him show his intelligence. He seems more or less average until he's in front of a computer. Since my Kiriko is a hands down genius, and in most areas she's not afraid to show it, I had her reactions and deductions be a little more reflective of that.**

 **Anyway, I dunno when the next chapter will come yet. Because of the multitude of differences from canon, this story is in a lot of ways incompatible with the Phantom Bullet novel. Which means for a lot of things, I can't use the novel as a base. For example, Asuna isn't even a part of the story anymore at this point, so what happens next in the original novels can't be used by this story at all, even a little bit. Which of course means that I'm going to be writing the next chapter freestyle. I've already got an idea on where it's going to go, so at least I'm not stuck or something.**

 **Anyway, I'm about done here. I'll see you next chapter, I guess.**


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